BRAIN VOMIT

-Nothing is more frustrating than having people tell you to stop pushing yourself so hard and be safe during your physical therapy, and then having those same people praise your surgeon and your physical therapist because you “recovering SO well”.  My surgeon and physical therapist are great at doing their jobs too, but how about a little credit where credit is due?

-If you want to get away with poor form on an exercise, just slap someone’s name on it.  “Those are just Leeman Rows”, “Those are Zottman curls”, “That’s a Dimel Deadlift”.  I hope one day they name mile high squats after me.

-It’s funny how, if I just give advice on reddit’s fitness page, it gets downvoted, but if I give advice and then post my stats, people have questions to ask. Meanwhile, no one is downvoting “Do 3x5 for everything”, regardless of the advice giver’s stats.

-I tend to be the first to say “training isn’t fun”, but picking up the Rolling Thunder legitimately is fun. It’s pretty cheap all things considered. Or maybe this is just a sign that I suck at it, since it means its light enough for me to actually enjoy it.

-The IPF announced that attending any seminar Ed Coan was it would get people suspended. Powerlifting is the craziest sport in the world, because it seems like the competitors LOVE for the powers at be to crap all over them. People still can’t give the IPF money fast enough, want to go to all of their meets, place high in their federation, etc, just like how people throw money at Inzer to get terrible customer service. Maybe when a sport is full of masochists, the way to succeed is to treat them like dirt.

I should've warned you that viewing this image would result in a ban from the IPF

-On the above, the predictable bellows of “we need to unify the sport!” were once again heard. If you wanna unify powerlifting, make it all multiply and untested, with lax standards and 72 hour weigh ins. If you don’t want to compete in multiply, you don’t have to.  If you don’t want to use drugs, you don’t have to. If you want to bury your squats, go ahead.  Weigh in 2 hours beforehand, go for it. …oh, what’s that you say?  You want it to be unified AND you want to win? Now you’re just being selfish.

-I wish I knew why I wanted an Ironmind Axle so badly.

-The prowler is an amazing tool.  I needed to get one a decade ago. Well worth the hype.

-I am still keeping my eyes peeled for one of Mark Rippetoe’s athletes to show up somewhere.  Seriously, if anyone ever finds one, please let me know. I figure I could even put the picture on a milk carton; you know one of his lifters would see it then.

 
Although I suppose to be really effective you'd have to put it on the gallon

-Do people realize how unoriginal they are being when they ask for meals that are healthy, cheap, easy to make and taste good?  Or how about someone wanting to know how to workout if they don’t have a lot of time? Do these people possess so much hubris that they assume they’re the first to ever think to ask such a question, and it’s only because of this reason that the answer isn’t immediately available for everyone in the world to enjoy? How heroic.

-Ever noticed how people stressing over the difference between chin-ups and pull-ups tend to have small and weak lats?

-It dawned on me that yesterday was the first time I had used a straight barbell since 10 Oct. It was for meadows rows. How funny that I used to consider that an “essential piece of equipment”.

-I have never seen a 700lb bencher worry about their lift ratios.

 
Does anyone care what he squats?

-The concept of rep ranges is one of the worst things to ever happen to lifting.

-Anyone getting upset at you because your workout isn’t optimal is trying to sell you something.

-If you ever want to upset someone seeking advice, inform them they that may need to read a book on the subject.

-I may be one of the first people in history to develop tendonitis from doing their physical therapy too much.

-People are coming up with methods to perform moving events in place at a commercial gym. One of the popular adaptations is to walk in place on an aerobics stepper with a dumbbell in each hand to simulate farmer’s walks. Jesus Christ people; quit trying to put the square peg in the round hole.

 
This is how they train the yoke

-I am really starting to believe that programming just plain doesn’t matter.  Consistency and intensity of effort seem to be the 2 most important factors of training, and as long as you have those 2 things going, you can pretty much do whatever you want and you’ll grow.  It seems the goal of the program is just to give you something exciting enough to believe in that you WANT to apply that consistency and intensity of effort.

-Kinda weird how people always mention the amount of weight lifted in a form check video, don’t you think?

-I came up with a fad diet a while back where you buy all your groceries, bring them to a field, throw them all as hard as you can, and whatever lands the farthest, you get to eat. I figured everyone else had a crazy idea, I should too.  The funny thing is, there is a little bit of merit. A head of lettuce is going to travel further than a box of Froot Loops (I didn’t misspell that buy the way; they can’t legally refer to it as “Fruit”), and meat will go farther than twinkies. It gets into a grey area with cans of Chef Boy-ar-dee though.

-If the only way your program works is if you eat a lot of calories, your program doesn’t work.

-All these kids who talk about how you need a ton of volume to grow and poo-poo 5/3/1 have clearly never run 20 rep squats. Do 20 reps of one exercise and grow magically. How much more volume do I need professor?

 
The alternate title of "How to experience unfathomable agony 3 times a week" didn't test well

-I get shocked at how much drama is in powerlifting until I realize that any sport that cares so much about what another dude is wearing is BOUND to be catty.

-Anyone telling you to “squat deeper” is really saying “find a way to squat less than me.”

-If you don’t’ know if you’re injured or not: you’re not.  Don’t worry; your body will definitely let you know when you’re injured!

-You’re getting old and beat down when “safe sex” means sex that runs zero risk of blowing out your back, hamstrings or knee.

-The more people that disagree with me, the better I feel about my training decisions.  As soon as the majority supports my conclusions, I start to worry.

-Anyone “annoyed” by bad form is terrified that someone might know something that they don’t.

-Anyone posting a “depth check” for squats online is just asking for permission.

-One of the many memes I am getting tired of is people posting photos of some sort of ridiculously overindulgent food items with “#gainz” or some other such nonsense. Let’s not try to pretend that the secret to success is hidden in the bottom of a banana split. If you like the taste of something, that’s enough justification. If you don’t care about being lean, that’s your call. However, I’m willing to bet that the person suffering more in the gym AND at the dinner table is probably getting better results.

#diabetes #whydon'tIhaveabs? #breastmode

-I’m always baffled when someone tells me that I train the way I do because I compete, but because they just want to get bigger and stronger, they train differently. Isn’t the goal of competing to be the biggest and the strongest in order to win?

-Anyone trying to convince you to stop doing something because it’s a “waste of money” is battling some envy and insecurity. No one cares about your personal finances.

-Why do college kids try to make it sound like they’re inmates?

-If you see a lifter call themselves an intermediate, they’re a beginner.  If they call themselves advanced, they’re a beginner.  If they call themselves a beginner, they probably not.

YOU CAN'T CHANGE REALITY BY MEASURING IT

This is going to get a little philosophical so bear with me. 

Did somebody say philosophy bear?!

Many philosophers have argued about the nature of reality.  Some posited that we have no way of knowing if what we experience is even real, or if in fact everything is an illusion and we’re all just brains in jars being given artificial senses (and, consequently, someone ended up making “The Matrix”).  Others argue that there IS a reality out there, but we’re not able to perceive it accurately because we must utilize our senses, which results in bias and imperfections.  Others in turn argue the possibility of many different and concurrently existing realities, resulting in innumerable possibilities of experiences.  And finally, some contend that none of this matters anyway.

For today’s topic, we’re going to assume that there is in fact a reality, and that you have access to it.  What we also must assume then, is that this reality exists regardless of your perception of it.  A chair will still be present even if you are not actively looking at or thinking about the chair.  This assumption becomes critical, because it will explain why MEASURING your reality has no impact on the fact of your reality.

Except this guy can actually get away with it

What am I talking about?  I’m talking about the incessant need of many trainees to know their “stats”.  Bodyfat percentage, 1 rep maxes in a variety of lifts, WILKS coefficient, the “golden ratio”, etc etc, all these things are entirely inconsequential to what IS.  Regardless of what these numbers end up being, they have zero impact on how big and strong you are, as THAT information is the same irrespective of being measured.

Let’s say a trainee looks at themselves in the mirror one day and decides they like how they look.  They think they have a good amount of definition and size, and are proud of their accomplishments.  Now, this same trainee goes and gets their bodyfat percentage measured, and it comes in a whopping 25%.  Did anything change because of the measurement?  No, the trainee still looks exactly the same as they did before, the only difference is that now they have some sort of data point for some sort of information.

Yet, trainees go CRAZY over this sort of stuff.  Everyday there are thousands of kids begging the internet to guess their bodyfat percentage based off of a few poorly taken photos (don’t forget the super aggressive overhead lighting to really create an illusion of leaness).  Why?  The number doesn’t change reality: you still end up looking exactly the same before you got the measurement.  Additionally, trusting amateurs to guess your bodyfat percentage is an exercise in madness, as these folks have zero credentials or experience, and love to quote numbers in the safe range like “12-15%”.  What does that even mean?!

Saying you have in IQ in the 80-120 range can mean wildly different things

The same is true for 1 rep maxes.  Finding out your 1 rep max in no way alters how strong you are, and in most cases, due to how stressful the maxing process is, it actually has the opposite result.  Prior to establishing your 1 rep max, you had the strength already available to move whatever weight it was that you end up moving for your 1 rep max: all that has happened is that you have demonstrated this strength.  Unless you are in a competition, what would be the value of this?  To know?  So you can tell people how much you lift?  Here’s another fun part about reality: you don’t get any bigger or leaner by knowing how much you can lift for 1 rep, nor will you appear any bigger or leaner by relaying this information to someone.  Once again, it is merely a data point, and of no impact to reality.

Our senses may be imperfect, but they are the only tools available to us to experience reality in whatever form it takes.  However you look, that is how you look, regardless of what the scale or calipers say.  However strong you are, that is how strong you are, regardless of whatever you lifted in order to prove it.  If you keep training hard and eating well, you will alter how others perceive you because you will alter YOURSELF, and in doing so none of the data points will matter. 

Or, of course, there is always nihilism.

BEING LAZY DOES NOT MAKE YOU HARDCORE PART III: EATING AND SLEEPING

Once more it becomes time to address the advice that is given under the pretense of “hardcore” while in reality simply being an excuse for laziness.  In this instance, it’s not simply the participant that is guilty of sloth, but the advice giver as well.  I am, of course, referring to the advice that, anytime a stall occurs, the solution is to eat and sleep more.

Medical coma and a feeding tube: the dirty secret to anabolism

First, yes, in most cases, eating and sleeping more will allow you more progress than taking the alternative route.  This is because food is used to make muscle, and sleep is when muscle is made.  The thing is, it makes this advice lazy and worthless.  Yes, great, eating and sleeping more will allow you to make more progress.  This isn’t addressing WHY there is a lack of progress, it’s simply providing a cure all.  It would be akin to saying “up your dose”. A true plateau buster, but not at all addressing the problem.

Plateaus and stalls occur for a variety of reasons, and most often a solution can be discovered in the programming and training rather than simply the recovery.  Jumping straight to more food and sleep is an act of intellectual sloth, refusing to take the time to consider the impact of how one trains in pursuit of their goals.  Maybe we’re not using enough volume, or our conditioning is sub-par, or we’re squatting too high, or we’re using the wrong assistance approach, or a variety of other possibilities.  Having to think about and through these things requires time and effort, and it’s far easier to ignore everything, keep training exactly the same way, and just solve all problems by eating and sleeping more.

This lazy problem solving method is also utilized by zealots as a means to scream down any opposition to their method.  It’s even become a meme now “YNDTP” (you’re not doing the program) or “YNDTFP” if you’re super edgy; because now we’re become so lazy we can’t even take the time to type out our insults.  The zealots, and even the authors, will shout this at anyone who dares deviate from their sacred programming, and explains that the reason they aren’t progressing isn’t due to programming not suited toward progress, but instead simply a result of not eating and sleeping enough.  Once again, doesn’t this solution work universally with ANY program?  Aren’t we admitting, by extension of the fact that this is the ONLY solution to the problem, that therefore the program IS terrible?  

I honestly just got tired of the Starting Strength meme, but you knew where I was going with this

Allow me to offer my own lazy advice at this juncture: conditioning and vegetables.  Why these two words?  Because 99% of the time, whenever I observe a trainee stalling, they aren’t engaging in any sort of conditioning, nor are they eating any vegetables.  Why is this the case?  Because, in predictable fashion, upon following the advice that recovery is the only solution to training stalls, these trainees have decided to avoid all extra activity outside of lifting AND they are eating a diet that is only fixated on calories and macros, completely ignoring the benefits of micronutrients.  Clearly those 3 sets of 5 reps are all the training one needs to grow, and it taxes ones recovery to such an incredible degree that one needs to mainline 6000 calories a day to grow, which means no room for anything green.  Christ, I’ve actually observed trainees asking what the point of eating veggies is since they don’t have many calories or macronutrients, a clear sign that their parents failed them at the dinner table.

As I said in my last post, conditioning is crucial to recovery, and the takeaway is that you can actually TRAIN your body to recover from training.  Recovery isn’t simply a passive pursuit, accomplished by nutritional surplus and an excess of sleep, but a trainable quality.  This is one of those things we KNOW instinctively, and have to be convinced by the “hardcore” crowd is untrue.  We KNOW that, with hard work, we can accomplish our goals, but the hardcore crowd MUST have it the other way: that the only path to success is through sloth and LESS work.  They pride themselves on their slovenly physiques that result from their nutritional laziness, deriding those with abs as “pretty boys” and other such derogatory terms, utilized as a defense mechanism to cope with the cognitive dissonance one meets when they are doing everything “right” and yet look terrible and have no results to show.  Only the completely deluded could possibly accept such insanity.  

Yo

It’s far easier to turn to food and sleep to solve one’s problems than to actually IDENTIFY the issue in order to find an adequate solution.  However, as we know, using the easiest method does not result in the greatest outcome, and instead is simply a recipe for mediocrity.  In almost all situations, hard work will trump hard rest.  

BEING LAZY DOES NOT MAKE YOU HARDCORE PART II: REST TIMES

Once again I must address this notion that working LESS somehow makes you more hardcore than those who work MORE. Today’s topic: rest times.

I frequent lifting forums these days mainly to acquire fodder for this blog, and this week I was graced with just such an opportunity.  A trainee was wondering why they were so fatigued during their training, and the prevailing wisdom of the internet was that this trainee was not resting enough between sets.  When the idea of improving conditioning was brought up, it was mocked, decried, crucified and stomped upon, because that’s not how you get bigger and stronger. No no, the only way to get stronger is to rest more between sets.

 
Getting so jacked!

People were actually bragging about how long they rested between sets.  A trainee with a 375lb squat dutifully informed me that he didn’t need to work on his conditioning, and that instead he just needed to rest 8-10 minutes between sets.  This same person informed me that it took him 45 minutes to do 3 sets of 5 on squats.

45 minutes to do 3 sets? Christ almighty, can you imagine how long this person takes to do a real workout? Would they ever even leave the gym?  Oh, but fret not, because the answer is obvious: since you’re resting so long between sets, you just need to do fewer sets in order to maximize recovery and minimize time spent in the gym.  After all, you’re “working hard” during those 3 sets.  Let us also not forget that one needs to mainline 6,000 calories a day to be able to recover from such brutal workouts.

 
There is a reason this is a meme

Folks, this is the logic of the fat and the weak.  It’s a creative way to make working less seem hardcore through mental gymnastics and sophism.  If you’re resting 8-10 minutes between sets, you’re not “working hard”; you’re out of shape. This is especially true if you’re using paltry poundages.  I realize that a lot of weak folks like to point out that weight on the bar doesn’t matter, only the percentage as it relates to your max does, but that’s clearly insanity.  Dave Tate has constantly pointed out that you can get a beginner to do 10 reps of 80% of their 1rm and they’ll be fine, but if you try to get a 1000lb squatter to do the same, you’re going to have to scrape them up off the floor.

Instead of taking pride in how long you rest, take pride in how LITTLE you need to rest to be able to crank out sets of the same intensity, one after the other.  This is accomplished by actually focusing on your conditioning and working to become *gasp* an athlete.  I know many internet kids like to sit back with their Chuck Taylors on, scarfing down McDoubles and talking about how they ARE athletes because they go to the gym 3 times a week and do Starting Strength, but let’s be honest for a second; no actual athlete trains/eats like that.  Hell, even the powerlifters that these kids THINK they’re being don’t train and eat like that.  The only people acting this way are non-athletes, whose only form of exercise is an INCREDIBLY limited weight training regimen with enough rest between sets to prevent ANY sort of sustained elevated heart rate.

The counter-argument is always about this terrifying fear of “losing gains”.  Can’t do ANY sort of conditioning, because it’s going to negatively impact recovery, sap into nutrition, and ruin progress in the weightroom.  Once again, another creative way to make skipping out on work seem hardcore.  You really want to believe you train SO hard that you couldn’t possibly perform a 15 minute circuit, or a tabata drill, or pull a sled or push a prowler, or go on a WALK?  How is it that some 19 year old kid only squatting 300lbs is pushing their body to the max, while there are Navy SEALS, elite athletes, firefighters, and all sorts of other folks grinding it out day after day? 

These guys are far too hungry, sleep deprived and delirious to worry about overtraining

Contrary to popular belief, you WILL get stronger by training MORE.  It’s so incredibly difficult to overtrain, and yet with all this fear of overtraining, there seems to be minimal concern regarding the epidemic of undertraining.  If you push your body, you’ll force it to make one of two decisions: adapt or break. I assure you, when push comes to shove, it will pick “adapt” far more often than break. And once you start adding in conditioning work, your recovery between sets gets better, which means you can have greater training density when you lift, allowing more volume/more work to be done and more progress to be made.

Or you could do 3 sets in 45 minutes.  I’m sure that’s really effective too.  Sounds hardcore.

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED: BEGINNERS

I’ve always opened the floor to my readers to ask me any questions they want addressed, and SeanR has taken me up on the offer, having left a question in the comment section of my most recent post.  In order to try to stay on point and not go off on too much of a tirade, I will be addressing his question in parts.  Here is the question in its entirety.

I was hoping for your next blog if you could touch on what a beginners first year of training should look like. Lets say they have played some sports and have messed around in the weight room, but now they are starting from ground zero. Also what weight range in the major lifts do you think a person should have after 1 year of training hard if they started as a beginner. 

And now to break it down a little bit

I was hoping for your next blog if you could touch on what a beginners first year of training should look like. Lets say they have played some sports and have messed around in the weight room, but now they are starting from ground zero.

You can tell Sean is an avid reader of mine already because he’s already addressed one of the primary things I advocate ALL trainees do before lifting: play some sports and perform some basic bodyweight training.  I’ll still harp on it here while on the topic of beginner trainees though.  If I were to craft the perfect strength super soldier, I’d want them to spend at least 2-3 seasons playing some sort of athletic competitive sport.  Something with a lot of full body movement, resisting opposing forces, and some contact.  American football, wrestling, basketball, rugby, the basics/classics. 

No

You gain a lot of skills and experience from this that carries over very well into the weight room (tenacity, body awareness, coordination, flexibility, mobility, etc etc).  Additionally, one of the other huge benefits of this is you learn the difference between being sore and being injured, which is something a LOT of beginners seem to struggle with, having never actually BEEN injured before.  I remember after my first day of football practice as a high school freshmen I was so sore I couldn’t even get out of bed, but I also knew at that point that I wasn’t injured, and I just limped onto the field, warmed up, and was good to go again.  Getting all of this knocked out ahead of time means that time spent in the weight room isn’t wasted trying to figure out your body.  So many beginner trainees spend the first few years spinning their wheels because they don’t even know the very basics about ANY sort of training, and at least with sports you’ll get SOMETHING out of that time, while spending 3 years resetting on Starting Strength is far less valuable.

Alright, let’s actually talk about the question.  It’s true I’ve written my own beginner programs in the past, and advocated for a few as well, but these days, were I to start all over, I’d honestly just run 5/3/1.  I’ve been a pretty vocal proponent of 5/3/1 recently, and it’s not because there is some sort of magic formula in the percentages or anything like that, but more that Jim Wendler really figured out some great principles to base ANY training program around and put them all together.  Starting light, focusing on PRs, building strength in sub maximal ranges, using assistance work without obsessing over it, basing training around 4 big movements, valuing conditioning, scheduled deloads, all that stuff is just gold. 

I’ve had a fair series of blog posts recently addressing my issues with the current market of “beginner programs”, and basically the obsession with always adding weight to the bar is just building a bunch of kids who know how to peak their strength but have zero idea how to actually build it.  It makes sense that Bill Starr used these programs for off-season football players, because it was a quick way to get them back to their old strength numbers before the season started again, but for an athlete who is more focused on weights versus football, there are better ways forward.  Additionally, there is a LOT to learn from something like 5/3/1, with all the exploration and experimentation available, and as long as one puts in the effort in the main sets, they’ll grow.

And this crap will stop happening

As for WHAT version of 5/3/1 to run, I’d honestly just plain have them do the 4 day vanilla 5/3/1 to start, with the BBB assistance work.  I’d swap out BBB deads with another type of squat (so have them doing squats and SSB squats as an example), and I’d have them do the alternate exercise for assistance (so do BBB press on 5/3/1 bench day, BBB squat on 5/3/1 dead day, etc), but otherwise keep it simple.  After a little while, they could do first set last, 5s Pro, full body, etc etc, but the original recipe works just fine.  Throw in some loaded carries somewhere as a finisher or on a non-lifting day if they want to be a strongman some day too, but for just building the basics, this will do just fine.

Onto the second part.

Also what weight range in the major lifts do you think a person should have after 1 year of training hard if they started as a beginner. 

This is a mentality I think a beginner needs to get away from in all honesty.  So many new trainees screw up because they’re so fixated on the 1rms that they can’t grasp the idea of building strength in various rep ranges.  It’s why there is this bizarre critique of 5/3/1 progressing “too slowly”, because all they see is the increase to the training max and not the actually increase of their STRENGTH.

 
I mean, who cares that this guy used 5/3/1 to bench 600lbs in multiple weight classes...TOO SLOW!

The longer I train, the more I realize that how much weight one lifts isn’t necessarily the best indication of how strong one is.  I realize that sounds crazy, but hear me out.  Let’s take the bench press.  Say you got a kid who is 150lbs and benches 135lbs with their back flat on the bench.  Now, let’s say that I force feed that same kid a gallon of water on the spot.  Suddenly, he’s got a bloated belly, and the ROM of the bench just decreased, so he can move more weight.  Now let’s say I slap some tacky onto his traps and butt and then stick him onto the bench with the craziest arch I can manage.  I just increased his bench again.  Say I teach him how to touch on the highest part of his arch.  Another increase.  How about tucking his shoulder blades as hard as possible?  More gains.  What about teaching him to squeeze the crap out of the bar and pull it apart?  More gains.  Etc etc, you can witness the insanity here, but this an everyday thing on the net.  Anytime a beginner says that they’re stalling, one of the first solution is “your form is probably bad”.  Yeah, probably, but that doesn’t fix the strength issue, just the “weight being moved” issue.

GETTING...SO...STRONG

Instead of focusing on hitting certain lifts within a certain amount of time, I feel it’s more beneficial for a beginner within 1 year’s span to have gained enough principles to know how to train effectively with a great amount of intensity of effort, along with the knowledge of what assistance movements work for them and what techniques improve their strength the most.  Strength builds slowly, and 1 year is still scratching the surface, but if that 1 year is spent training intelligently with violent intensity, that trainee will be MUCH further ahead than some guy with a 300lb squat who got that way by running Smolov and peaking to a max, eating whole pizzas every meal, wearing a belt, weightlifting shoes and wraps out of a monlift after huffing some ammonia and blasting some metal.  One has learned how to get stronger, the other how to move more weight.

Thank you for your question, and if I can clarify anything, please let me know.  If anyone else has any topics they’d like covered, leave a comment.